Cranberry Almond Granola

When Kate was three, we joined a parent/child class.  The parents would meet in one room while the children got to play together in another room.  We parents decided to take turns bringing snacks and one mom brought granola when it was her turn.  That's it - just a bag of granola.  Okay, so it was homemade.  And, there was nothing else so...I tried some.  It was SO good, just by itself.  I got the recipe from her and have been keeping our cupboard stocked with it ever since.  We eat it plain or with yogurt or as a cereal with milk.  I made a few changes when she first gave me the recipe and, now, don't remember what modifications are mine and what was the original but here it is as I make it now:

CRANBERRY ALMOND GRANOLA

Cooking Oil Spray

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

3/4 cup brown sugar

6 cups otmeal

2 cups sliced almonds

1 cup wheat germ

1 cup coconut

2 cups dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray two 11x17 jellyroll pans with cooking oil spray.  Set aside.  In a 1 quart icrowave-safe bowl, combine oil, maple syrup and brown sugar.  Microwave, uncovered, at high for 3 minutes or until sugar starts to melt.  Remove from icrowave and whisk until any lumps disappear.

In a large 3 quart or larger bowl, combine the oats, almonds, wheat germ and coconut.  Toss to mix well.  Pour the syrup mixture over the oat mixture and stir until well-mixed.  Spread evenly in jellroll pans.

Place a pan on each oven rack and bake for 10 minutes.  Stir the granola and return to the oven, rotating the pans, and bake for an additional 10 minutes.  Cool granola in the pans for 1 hour or until reaches room temperature.  Sprinkle half of the cranberries over each pan.  Stir to mix well.  Store in airtight container up to 2 weeks. (I've found mine to keep much longer.)

Tomato, Potato, Peony, Raspberry, Chive

So much rain yesterday and my gardens are very happy!  I went to check on everyone this morning and they've all grown overnight.  The tomato plants have these beautiful yellow blossoms already.  Tomato plants smell so distinctly, maybe not exactly pleasant, but yet, yes, pleasant because of such yummy associations.

Mark and John planted potatoes in the back corner and we've been having a had time distinguishing them from weeds.  Overnight, however, they have stood up and made themselves recognized.  They will no longer be mistaken for weeds.

And the peony - I was so afraid the hard rain would hurt these delicate blooms but, no.  It is looking as beautiful as always.

As I neared the raspberry patch, I could hear the buzz - so many fat fuzzy bees - wonderful!  And there are the not so beautiful, rather vampiric looking, hard white orbs which will soon turn to soft, warm, red, juicy berries eaten between the garden and the deck.

I missed the first crop of chives already.  Don't mind much as the blossoms were pretty when nothing else was blooming.  And, oh, did they smell good as I cut them down.  The next batch I'll clip before they flower, use some for cooking, and freeze some for winter.

It's Raining and Claire is Back

Today was set aside to work with my friend, Kimm, on our new book club project.  Not, good heavens, another book club - just a book club project - more to follow later, hopefully soon later!  But Kimm had to cancel and so I decided to use the day to write; to write real stuff, not just my blog which is questionable as real writing.  Its kind of more crafting and sharing and telling and showing and, of course, photographing.  And, hey - do not criticize my verbs - I'm blogg-ing!

So, in preparation of writing, Kate and I watched 3 more episodes of the Vlog Brothers' Brotherhood 2.0 on Youtube before school.  John Green is so awesome - he even convinces me that being an English nerd is a cool thing!  And...still not really writing.

Dropped Kate off at school and then...went to the bookstore to buy some books about getting inspired to write.  Sat in my car, in the rain, in the parking lot jotting down thoughts in a little notebook.  Kinda writing - at least acting like a writer - I think.

Still raining when I get home and I'm thinking of Claire.  Claire is the main character in the book I'm writing; the main character who I've kept in a box on the bottom of my project-to-do shelf for the past two years.  I've let her out briefly in that time but she was very uncooperative, which I guess is understandable if you've been kept in a box for two years.  But she's still alive; she's amazingly still alive.  So, I brought her box upstairs this morning since it was raining and the rain reminded me of Claire's first night back at her Grandfather's cabin when it rained so hard.  Thinking about writing.

I can't put the box on the dining room table 'cause it is covered with all the laundry I started folding yesterday.  Maybe I should finish that first so I have a clear, clean workspace.  Still...not writing.

Needing a cup of coffee by now so that I can start writing.  The coffee is, of course, in the kitchen - where my phone is charging, screen side up.  Ooh, I have thirteen notifications on Facebook!  That's never happened before so I take a look.  Awww - it's my lovely neice, Sarah, saying nice things about me and "liking" my writing.  So, I better get back to that writing.

But, oh yeah, I was going to take a photo to add to the blog later 'cause who wants to read a blog without pictures?  Sheesh - might as well read a book.

Okay, she's out now - Claire.  She's sitting on my couch, watching the birds, listening to the rain.  We talked...some.  I wrote...some.  She's breathing deeply.  So am I.  Maybe tomorrow she'll be more cooperative.

Two Sheets to the Hair

I always have a hard time finding a headband that doesn't either slip off or else squeeze my head so tight that my teeth hurt.  One wide black fabric band has been my staple accessory until I started thinking the famous (or fatalistic?), "I could make that!" 
Okay, that was a few years ago and the pattern I found on Larissa's blog has been sitting patiently on my project-to-do shelf (which spilled out from my project-to-do closet).  I had some fabric left over, and still on my sewing table, from the Tell Me a Story Quilts and a Peanuts sheet that I got at a garage sale for a quarter.

I really like each of them but I think Kate has alreay claimed the Happiness is..., which is also reversible!

When visiting my Grandma K. as a child, my cousin Tina and I would have our hair "put in rags" after our baths.  The rags were an old sheet torn into 3 inch strips.  After winding hair around the fabric, you wind the fabric back up around the hair and, in the morning, you have long ringlet curls.  My Grandma had four daughters and every Saturday night they would bathe, comb out thier hair and wrap it in rags.  Kate asked me to do her hair last night:

And in the morning:

Once you comb your fingers through the ringlets, it creates very soft curls. As Kate used to say, beau-fa-ful!

Playing Hooky, in the Yemen, Faith & Fish

I played hooky, with my mom, yesterday.  We went to a new restaurant for lunch.  Sitting outside in the beautiful, dry, 73 degree sunshine, we both agreed that we could just stay there for the entire afternoon.  BUT, I had been really wanting to see the film, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen so off we went.  It seemed rather fitting as Mark was "up north" fishing for a couple days - not for salmon, of course, but still.  I was so starved of movie theater viewing that I loved the movie; the English castle, the exotic desert, the elegance of fly fishing, all on the big screen.  The little voice in the back of my head, however, was whispering snidely, "Just like that reviewer said, a movie that pretends it is something it's not -- namely, an intelligent romantic comedy."

But I had such a nice afternoon.  And, despite the cutesy humor, there were scenes that I thought of yet today.  Particularly a scene where the sheikh (who wants to introduce salmon fishing in the Yemen) is dining and conversing with an ichthyologist (played by Ewan McGregor [Kate adds a.k.a. Obi-wan Kenobi]).  Being a spiritual man himself, the sheikh asks Dr. Jones, the ichthyologist, about his faith.  Dr. Jones replies that he is not at all spiritual but more of a facts and numbers kind of guy.  Knowing that Dr. Jones as an avid fisherman, the sheikh reveals the similarities between religion and fishing in the way they both require patience, adherence to a given set of guidelines, and faith that a positive outcome waits for us in the end.

My Uncle Bud would tell us that he drove 35 minutes each way to go a particular church because mass lasted only 15 minutes there (versus the 60 minute mass at the church 5 minutes away).  You do the math.  He also said that it was better to be in a fishing boat thinking about God than to be in a church thinking about fishing.

As we walked out of the theater, our eyes squinting against the bright sun, I thought of the first and last line of S.E. Hinton's book, The Outsiders; "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house,..."  I can't ever walk out of a movie theater during daylight and not think of that line.

Yarnbombed!

Kate's softball games are almost always at the High School ball fields but this past weekend they were moved to another field across town.  On the way, we stopped for gas and turned the wrong way out of the station.  Thanks to that wrong turn, guess what we saw?  My first sighting of real live yarn bombing!  I've read about it and seen pictures but never right there, in my face.  Yarn Bombing (or Grandma Graffiti) is knit or crocheted art on public signs, railings, buildings...

There was a car behind me so I whipped around the block and pulled up to the sign.  Kate was riding shotgun so she took this lovely photo.  It is a little hard to see because of the green trees behind it but the post of this stop sign is wearing a "flower stem" sweater.

Technically yarn bombing is illegal but, since there are no territorial claims associated with it and it doesn't permanently damage the property, the act isn't usually prosecuted.  I wonder if this is still there - maybe I'll drive by tomorrow and check.

When my nephew was born, I wanted to make him a crocheted blanket, but blankets with holes just don't ring "cozy" to me.  So, I crocheted the top and then sewed a back and binding to it to make this little crocheted quilt; small enough for him to drag around:

Our Best Friend

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
--Groucho Marx

The other night, after it was dark, and I was the only one up reading, there was a loud noise outside.  I could hear Rocco growling in the other room and went to investigate.  Here was my tough guard dog -- and his blankie!  Bet that would scare off any intruder.

He (Rocco) was outside with me this morning while I watered the gardens.  From the corner of his eye, he spotted a treat on the patio and gobbled it up.  Then he noticed, hey, the place is covered with them - they're actually falling from the sky.  He raced around, snatching up, munching down those little helicopter maple tree seeds!  When I yelled at him, he quickly licked up a few more, like I was going to take them away.  Best friend, yes.  Rocket scientist, no.

Tally Me Bananas

We had some hush-hush banana dealing going on in the ball field parking lot a few days ago.  The mom of one of Kate's teammates worked at a local fun run in the morning, handing out bananas.  At the end of the run, she still had a boxful left and was told to take 'em home.  So, she asked a few of us in the stands - did we want some bananas?  If so, meet her in the parking lot after the game. 
Now we have bananas coming out of our ears!  So, I made banana muffins with mini chocolate chips.  I always make a quarter of the batch without chocolate for Mark, as he prefers them straight up banana.  When it comes to muffins, I want the chips, but with banana bread, I prefer plain.  So after all the chocolate ones vanished, I had to cut this one into slices - trick my brain into thinking it was bread!
In the mid 90s, I went to the Jazz Festival in New Orleans with my friend Lisa.  One of the popular food vendors that year was bananas on a stick, dipped in chocolate.  I don't remember which bands we saw that day but I do remember standing in line for a chocolate dipped banana on a stick; standing in line behind Counting Crows front man, Adam Duritz!  Well, I'm pretty sure it was him anyway - he's fairly distinctive looking.

At the bookstore yesterday I got (besides It's a Book) this beautiful copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Books.  In July, our Mom Blook Club will be reading The Tiger's Wife.  As I've read that it deals with fairytales and fables and, specifically, Kipling's The Jungle Book, I'm looking forward to this reading.  We (John, Kate, and I) have read and loved Kipling's Just-So Stories (our favorite is "The Beginning of the Armidillos), but not The Jungle Book - add it to our summer stack.

Technically Speaking...

Kate and made laundry detergent before school using this new recipe - seems to working well.  I threw a load in this morning and then ran up to the local bookstore. 

I'm looking for a few certain titles for our summer reading, one of which was on hold at this store.  As I browsed the childrens section, I flipped through It's a Book by Lane Smith.  It's a funny story about an old school book-reading monkey being annoyed by a "new school" tech toy loving donkey.  The donkey, with his laptop, keeps asking the monkey questions like, "How do you scroll down?", "Can it text?", and "Can it Tweet?".  The onkey repeatedly responds, "No, it's a book."  In the end, in frustration, the monkey's little mouse friend calls the donkey by another "technically correct" term for donkey.  There are many discussions out there as to whether or not, because of that one word, this is appropriately marketed for 4-8 year-olds.  It is, technically, a correct word.  It is used, however, in a derogatory adult-humored way.  I think it's funny.  But I wouldn't buy it for my 4 year-old niece.
During my high school years and first few years of college, I spent my summers working at a Media Services Distribution Center.  We received books from publishers, typed up library catalog cards, repackaged the books and sent them on to public school libraries.  With some shipments, the publisher's distributor would sent a box of "gift" books; free of charge, to promote a new book or reward a library for a large order.  As we (me and about 6 other high school/college kids) spent the morning typing cards for stacks of books, we set aside anything amusing.  Over lunch, we took turns reading the books we had set aside, vying to be the one to find the most obnoxious book published and ordered this summer.  The summer of 1986 was my year.  The box I opened one morning contained free gift copies of Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book by Shel Silverstein.  This book is now subtitled, "A Primer for Adults Only" but it wasn't on those copies!  We couldn't hardly stay in our chairs, we were laughing so hard.  In the end, we took it to our supervisor and she sent the box back to the distributor instead of the elementary school it was bound for.

Made You Cry

Kate asked me, the other day, to name three movies that made me cry.  Immediately, I knew which three always make me cry, every time I see them - even if it's the 17th time.  They are Kolya, Shadowlands, and Corrina, Corrina.  There is one part in each of these films that, even though I know it's coming, the tears well and spill.  What I didn't realize was that each part, of each film, deals with the crack in a child's otherwise stoic grief.

This picture is me at 6-9 months (I know, the hair - and the chins!).  I don't think I was suffering any major grief - just didn't want to pose for this photo.  But, yet, I did pose.
I am pulled to my knees at the strength of children to persevere - even in grief stricken circumstances.  It is especially the attempts to deal with their emotions, the creative inventions, that move me to tears. 

In Corrina, Corrina, it is the part when Molly lays her mother's dress out on the grass, lies down next to it and slides her hand into the dress pocket.  In Kolya, it's when Kolya uses the shower sprayer, while having his bath, as a telephone to talk to his grandmother, who has just died.  And in Shadowlands, it is the shared grief of Joy's son, Douglas, and the adult C.S. Lewis.

Just after Kate turned four, I traveled with Mark overseas on a business trip.  We dropped Kate and John at my parents, where they would stay, and were getting ready to leave.  Kate sat on the steps, hugging her knees, with her eyes closed tightly.  She said good-bye to me but wouldn't open her eyes, saying that if she saw me, she would cry and she was trying to be brave.   (Hard to enjoy my trip a lot after that!)

They are so precious!

On a happier note...here is my kitchen tree in its sassy adolescent green:

Affection and Imagination

We were industrious this weekend!  Kate made the chocolate bouquet with a sign saying "I love you even more than chocolate!"  Now, coming from my notoriously chocoholic daughter, this is saying something!

While Kate was at a birthday party on Friday night, John and I made these loofah soaps, using directions I found here.  We both really enjoyed making these - and giving them on Sunday!  John was in charge of the scent (green tea & cucumber) and he did a perfect job - smells good but "not too stinky"!  His favorite part, however, was using the shredder to make packing straw from brown paper bags! Noise and destruction - how could it get any better?

 And then, our S'more basket.  We always seem to be trying to figure a way to store the s'more supplies in one place that is easy to bring to the campfire, easy to spread out during assembly, and easy to pack up and not worry about bugs getting into.  I'm not sure if these will be more cumbersome than helpful but...only one way to find out...Mmmmmm!

All in all, it was such an enjoyable weekend.  I have decided that blogging on the weekend is optional so, this past weekend, I opted not.

We were just have too much fun making things, together, for those we love.

I am certain of nothing,

but the holiness of the Heart's affections

and the truth of

Imagination.

--John Keats

LOST with what book?

While waiting for more Mad Men and/or Boardwalk Empire discs from Netflix, I've been rewatching episodes of LOST.  I might be enjoying it even more than the first time!  This is a show that my friend, Joanne, kept telling me I would like but I insisted on dragging my feet for some reason.  Of course, she was completely right on!

I once found a link to a LOST book club which seems to be now defunct but wouldn't that be a great parameter? There are so many books shown, quoted from, or referenced in the series.  This is a link to another blog with a list of the books featured on LOST.  At some point, I'm gonna get through this list!

So, I've been thinking...if I were lost on a deserted island, which of my books would I hope to find in my suitcase (assuming I could find my suitcase)?  Although Wuthering Heights is my all time fave for it's wonderful storytelling and gorgeous gothic elements, I think it would not be the best companion on a deserted island.  I would be happy if I had remembered to pack Colette's My Mother's House and Sido (the gray covered book above).  These are two different pieces collected in this one book and I have read it numerous times.  For me, there is no author who is able to tranport me to another place and time as succintly as Colette does.  For days after reading, I feel I've recently visited close friends in a small house of a rural french town; a house filled with books, freshly baked bread, cats sleeping in the kitchen, and a walled back garden where the children are playing.  To be in such warm company while on a deserted island would be nice, I think.  What book would you hope to find?

The little book in the middle is one that is always in my purse - another that I've read many, many times.  Why don't they make these little pocket sized books anymore?!  The one on the left is a gift my parents brought home for me on their most recent trip to France - that one, I've never read and probably never will but I love having it in the language in which it was originally written.

Who Did This?

The kids were doing their homework in the dining room when I found this on the kitchen floor by their backpacks.  I grabbed it, waving it as I confronted them, "Who did this - where did this come from - which one of you did this? " I asked.  They both looked like deer caught in the headlights.  Finally John piped up, "I did.  It was our project for Art Adventure but I didn't get time to finish it."

"Did you like it; did you think it was fun; would you like me to help you finish it?  I have lots of supplies downstairs if you want to make more."  I stopped myself here, knowing that I might be going too fast.  He had, afterall only done two stitches (technically 2 1/2 - if you could see the back you'd see that he made a half stitch through some back threads). 

Cross-stitch was the first craft I learned and I did it obsessively as a kid.  I loved (and love) the feel of the stitches as they start berming up next to each other; the way the pattern or design starts to come to life; the thought of ancient tapestries hanging on stone walls, covering secret passageways.  But my children have never shown much interest in any fabric or thread crafts (other than John enjoying the sound of acceleration when he steps on the sewing machine foot pedal).

"Yeah," he answered, "it was okay."  I can work with that!  I dug out my old pieces, some of them unfinished and have been working on them whenever my computer is "loading".  John stopped by the computer desk while I was working and examined a few pieces. 
"You did these?" he asked. 
"Yep, what do you think?"
"It's cool.  You should give it to me and I'll give it to my kids and we'll keep doing that for like a couple hundred years and then it could be in an art museum."
That's a compliment, right?

Snail Mail

I remember spending time, as a child, at my Grandma's house on the farm where my Dad grew up.  The barn, chicken coop, windmill, and fields were all still there but it was no longer a working farm, no animals.  My Grandma once asked me to go get her mail.  I walked to the end of the very long gravel drive to her mailbox with long grassy meadows on either side.  There were no house numbers then; her address was simply the family name, rural route 1 (RR#1), city, state and zip.  When I removed the letters (more letters than bills - how nice would that be?), I saw a chipped, but very pretty, china cup at the back of the box.  It seemed so weird.  I gently carried it back to the farmhouse and dumped it with the letters on the kitchen table.  My Grandma then made me march right back down the drive and put it back in the mailbox.  Apparently, the china cup was how she bought stamps.  When she ran out of stamps, she just put her letters in the box without stamps.  The mailman (it was a man then) would put stamps on the envelopes, put the remaining book of stamps (they really were little books of stamps) to be exchanged for money the next day via the china cup.

We have this little blue book of "things to do this summer" that the kids write in when they think of somethingt we just don't have time for right now but that can certainly fit into our summer schedule.  So far on the list are: make paper, stay up all night, camp out in back yard, and make ice cream.  I just added, "write snail mail letters".  It will be fun to see the mail truck pull up and know that there's a good chance of a letter showing up among all the bills and junk.  So, if we send you a letter, please write back!
Do you and your someone special have "a song"?  Ours is Bob Dylan's To Make You Feel My Love.  The Letter by The Boxtops is my parents' song.

"Oh please don't go-"

I woke this morning to the sad news that Maurice Sendak had just died. 
After dropping the kids off at school, I stopped by our local used bookstore and bought a copy of the "controversial" In the Night Kitchen. 

The cashier said, "Did you hear?"
I said, "Yes".
"Its sad," she said.
"Very sad."

Maurice Sendak was the preeminent childrens' author and illustrator of the 20th century.  His stories and pictures contained the dark, unknown, and therefore, mysterious sides of childhood.  His characters, like all children, have to face life and come out the other side a bit of a hero.

In a 2003 interview, he commented on writing books for children saying, "They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think."

I studied childrens' literature in college.  Here is an excerpt from a paper I wrote on the works of Maurice Sendak:
"The most intriguing element of Sendak's style is the wonderful musicality of his illustrations.  One can see that there is music playing when looking at the pictures.  The characters dance and move to the rhythm of some unheard song.  The author shouts acceptance to this observation.  Sendak lives for music....Remembering almost exactly what piece he was listening to at each step of any particular book, page, or scene,..."  Look at the monsters dancing with Max in Where the Wild Things Are.  It is the music and dancing that helps Max rule the wild things.  Whe our kids were small and we got to the point of roaring our roars, gnashing our teeth, rolling our eyes, and pretty much showing our claws,...we turned on the music and danced with the kids.  Even when they were infants; but especially when they were monsters toddlers.  Sendak even drew Mozart into the illustrations of at least two books, Dear Mili and Outside Over There.  Mozart isn't part of the story, just part of the picture.  You can see him in this picture, on the left hand page, laying down with a red coat on, conducting the small group of children.

Dear Mili is a treasure of a book.  It is a story that was written in a letter by Wilhelm Grimm (of the Grimm brothers) to a little girl who had lost both her parents.  Grimm wrote the letter as a sort of comfort and it reads just as if the two were sitting together on the couch and he is making up the story as he goes.  The girls' family had the letter for 150 years before it was publically discovered in 1983.  Five years later, it was published, accompanied by illustrations of Maurice Sendak.  No better combination than Grimm and Sendak - and that their paths should cross in such a way!  In the story, a mother sends her little girl into the woods were she will be safe from the impending war.  When the girl thinks she cannot go on any further, she asks God for help and instantly feels better.  When it begins to rain, she says, "God and my heart are weeping together."
As it began to rain this morning, I thought distinctly of those words.

A Gift of Love

I love giving gifts.  I especially love giving gifts that I've made for a special someone - or two special someones who are expecting two more special someones!

These are the Tell Me A Story quilts that I've been working on for two of my nieces who are both expecting in July (one, a girl and one, a boy).  The quilt idea is from The Modern Quilt Workshop.  I've seen pictures online and had the book reserved at the library but it didn't come in time so I had to sketch the quilt out on graph paper, rally up my math skills (Oh - that's what I'm ever gonna use this for!) and kinda guess on construction but it was very fun to put together.  The idea is that you start your story at one of the picture squares, then choose your path to the next picture to continue your adventure and keep on going.  Of course, I adore anything that fosters storytelling.  Mix it into a snuggly quilt and its perfect!

Yesterday, us aunties hosted a double baby shower and I was totally giddy with anticipation for them to open these quilts.  I just love giving gifts!  These photos are a little blurry because, yes, I was up late Saturday finishing the binding.  I don't prewash the fabrics or batting because I like how everything shrinks a little after the first washing and sorta puckers up.  So, Sunday morning I was washing and drying each blanket individually (didn't want the colors running into each other), puckering them up and then quick took them outside for a snapshot before wrapping them.




Paint Therapy

I found Kate in the kitchen today, painting.  We (Kate, John, and I) used to paint alot before they started school.  It has slipped my mind as an activity that we should still do.  Here are some pieces we did years ago:

This is John's, painted when he was three.  It hangs in the kitchen next to:

The yellow horizontal lines are the "painting's ribs, except you can't see them very good 'cause there's all the blood and stuff in the way." (Kate at five)

My painting of Kate and John that hangs in our family room.

And my Mother and Child painting.  It is hard to remember when they were so small I could hold them on my knees like this and just look at them.

Little bit of Everything

Last night was a marathon night with evening activities.  So, I made the pheasant pasties in the afternoon and they were ready to grab and go - and turned out to be very good!  I can imagine how tasty they would have been as a lunch out on the fishing boat or down in the mines.  Although I love the concept, I didn't do the traditional dessert in one end and dinner in the other end - sounds yummy though, huh?  These also look like they're tipped on their sides - 'cause they are.  Just trying something different.

Kate was the MC (Mistress of Ceremonies) at her school's 2012 Variety Show last night and did a wonderful job.  I cannot imagine being able to get up on stage and speak into a microphone.  There were even a few changes that she rolled with in the blink of an eye.  I am constantly amazed by my children!

Mark and I both took the morning off today, had coffee, stopped a few garage sales, and then had lunch before heading back to work.  It was a good morning.  Here are a few "finds":



A cassette player/radio jukebox for Kate's room - and the kicker?  A Buddy Holly cassette - her absolute favorite right now (if you know my family, you'll understand - Buddy Holly is a really big deal!).  Finding these cassettes feels kinda like when I was younger and my Dad would find a cool 8-track tape of a group that was hot before they even had 8-track tapes.

John's birthday is coming soon and he has "tackle box" on his wish list so we found some great tackle to start filling it.  This was one of those guy garage sales where I stood in the driveway for ten minutes waiting while Mark contemplated which lures to buy - it's definitely fun when we both find sales with "good stuff"!

See a Penny, Pick It Up

"See a penny, pick it up; all day long you'll have good luck.  See a penny, let it lie; good luck will just pass you by."  Those are the words I remember learning as a child and I always pick it up - really.

But when we found this penny in the parking lot, I found out that Kate has learned it differently.  She looked at it first and then proclaimed, "yep, you can pick it up." -?- The way she has learned it is this: if you find a penny and it is heads up, you should pick it up.  If you find a penny and it is tails up, you should flip it over so that the next person to find it, will find it heads up and be able to keep it.

I like the new way better.  I like thinking that maybe someone else already found this penny but it was tails and they flipped it over for me to find.

Checking out at the grocery store today, my total came to 16.44.  I had four pennies in my wallet and no nickels.  I recently read an article about the cost of making new pennies - it costs $0.0241 to make one new penny.  So, there's a very real possibility that the government will stop making pennies.  Crazy or not, this makes me want to hang onto my pennies!  I stood in line thinking that I'd rather give the cashier a quarter and two dimes and get $0.06 back than to give her my last four pennies. (Obviously you don't want to get in line behind me at the grocery store.)

The Soundtrack of My Day

Ever have a day when one of your senses seems particularly keen?  Today, it was my hearing.  My day was full of sound; of song. 

Steamy but with a slight damp chill in the air, it felt good to have the kitchen window open early this morning while I made school lunches; listening to Fascinating Loons, daydreaming of mornings at the cabin when you need a sweatshirt but it still just feels so good to be outside.

Down in the sewing room, working on the quilt project, Roseane Cash's The List was playing.  I'm not a country music lover but I really adore this CD.  If you're not familiar, it is 35 songs from a list of 100 that her father, Johnny Cash, wrote down for her to know as part of her "music geneology, the songs that had informed him, and would eventually inform me."

I sat outside, waiting for my sister-in-law to pick me up this afternoon (going to check out a garage sale!).  A female cardinal sat on a branch nearby and sang her heart out at me.  The song was beautiful but I suspect she didn't mean for me to enjoy it.  I believe my chair was uncomfortably close to somewhere she wanted to be.

Both Kate and John sang in the Youth Choir at church tonight with the sun glowing through stained glass and it was a beautiful way to end this day.

Miracle

I have just listened to this

symphony which Mozart dashed off

in one day

and it had enough wild and crazy

joy to last

forever,

whatever forever

is

Mozart came as close as

possible to

that

--Charles Bukowski

The Play Garden

Cottonwood "fairies" were flying about the backyard today and I noticed that our fairy resort is in need of some care!  This is the garden under the pine trees that the kids have taken over.  It's not much to look at right now but there are miniature rope/basket ziplines running from tree to tree, a sparkling blue stone river and mischievous gnomes hiding in the ground cover.  When the paths are straightened and groomed, it looks much more magical.  I'll try to catch a photo in a few weeks to show you when it is put back to rights.

The summer before last Kate and John and two of their friends transformed this garden into an outdoor art festival.  There were paintings clipped to the ziplines, colorful clay sculptures displayed on the branches of the old pines, and hand-written stories and poems hanging from birdhouses.  The girls sold tickets and refreshments while John played guitar.  We should have fairy lights hung in these trees.